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GRAND CENTRAL ARENA: Chapter 2
I'm doing three chapters this week, to get us past the initial intro stuff.
Chapter 2.
Simon Sandrisson watched from a nearby observation window as the woman shot from the cockpit of her racing ship like a rocket herself, the pilot's suit automatically retracting the helmet and then unfastening as she flew through the weightless docking bay towards her racing crew. Deep blue hair cascaded around her and the two men that arrested her headlong flight with enthusiastic hugs. He could hear Ariane Austin's elated contralto shout, "We DID IT!"
"You did it, you lunatic!" Carl Edlund, her crew chief and controls expert, answered as he guided them towards the entrance to the station interior which was nearest to Simon. "Were you and Hawke trying to get killed in there?"
"Oh, stop it. It's not like you haven't seen worse."
"True," Edlund said as they emerged from the lock, "But usually 'worse' means 'someone got killed', so I would rather compare it to 'sane', which doesn't get seen very often either."
Simon was about to speak when another man whipped right past him and stopped directly between him and the racing crew. The sandy blond hair and emblem on his jacket – a wolf-head between hawk wings – was immediately recognizable. "Austin." Hawke said.
"Hawke."
The other pilot flipped forward and grabbed her up in a bearhug. "That was fantastic!"
Simon could see Ariane was startled but gratified. Now he became aware of more and more people making their way into the area. A victory party, Mio said. It's going to be noisy here for a while. Why not come back later?
I suppose I could, he said to his AISage companion. Mio's avatar, currently visible only to him, showed the synthetic intelligence – friend, confidant, research partner, advisor, a part of him since he had the headware installed nearly 20 years ago – as a pretty, diminuitive Asian woman with long dark hair, wearing a white suit styled, as was his own, to echo the appearance of the ancient and venerable scientist's laboratory coat. But what better time to catch Dr. Carl Edlund and his partner in a good mood?
There is that, Mio said with a smile. And while she seems oblivious to risk, Dr. Edlund may not be.
Oh, hardly oblivious. Judging by her actions, I'd say she enjoys risk. He watched the dark-blue haired woman adjust without apparent conscious thought as the station "spun up" to provide about a third of a G for people to stand in. She was tall – just a few centimeters below his one hundred ninety – and aside from her hair showed no obvious biomods; her eyes appeared to be almost the same shade as her hair and her complexion was tanned but clear.
Hawke, as he turned, showed tiger-like facial striping; some of the others coming in sported mods ranging from full-size angelic wings (Kami, those have got to be a pain to live with! he thought) to catlike claws, fur, a couple of scaled individuals, and more. In a way, being without mods makes one stand out these days, he mused.
True enough, Mio agreed. Of the over 200 people physically here, there appear to be no more than 10 with no visible modifications. And that ten does not include you.
Well, yes, my hair IS visible, but it could be natural. Just very unlikely to be so pure white at the age of 32 or to fall just so.
Are you not going to approach Ms. Austin or Dr. Edlund?
There is no great rush; I spent two weeks on a ship just to get here, no reason to get impatient now. I'm sure I can catch up with Dr. Edlund at some point, even if Ms. Austin is the constant focus of attention. You might ping her AISage and let her know I'm here physically to talk to her.
A pause. She doesn't appear to have one.
"What?" Simon was so startled that he realized he'd spoken aloud. It was rare enough to find someone who didn't keep their AISage head-resident (Simon, in fact, could only think of one person he'd ever met who didn't), but someone who didn't have one at all?
Wait. She does have one, according to records… but he's only rarely on the Nets, at least visibly. There, that ovoid box. Mio's directives highlighted in red a slightly larger than hand-sized object something like a high-tech turtle shell clipped to Ariane Austin's belt. That's her AISage's resident housing.
Simon shook his head. What was the point of having an AISage if you didn't even let it do its job? Perhaps he should be speaking with the other pilot, Hawke. But the reasons they'd focused on Austin remained valid; she had so many good connections that it would be a shame to waste them. That's a clumsy housing, too.
Mio was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Actually, it's about as small as it can be. Simon, her AISage is a T-5.
That explained the casing. A Tayler-5 was the highest permitted AI rating outside of special research and even with modern equipment you weren't fitting a T-5 in ordinary headware. A T-1 was generally considered equal to an ordinary human, and Mio – just about top-of-the-line for a headware AISage – had a Tayler rating of 2.5.
What a racing pilot needed, or wanted, with a T-5 AISage, now that was a mystery. Simon liked mysteries – it was part of what had drawn him into physics, unravelling the mysteries of how and why the universe worked the way it did – and now Ariane Austin wasn't just a daredevil in a totally anachronistic sport, she was a puzzle.
Simon smiled. He was looking forward to meeting her after all!
Hopefully not TOO infodumpy and entertaining enough. :)
I Want An AIS
Also, yay blue hair (I may have watched too much anime growing up, that this seems a fairly normal hair colour to me).
And boy do I wish I had an AIS (or similar) and matching head-ware to organise my life for me, and talk to, and poke me when I need a good poking to get something done and, yeah. Though I do wonder how long term access to one of those would affect somebody's personal development, in both good and bad ways. I expect a chunk would come down to what kind of protocols the AIS was set up with.
Hmmm, angel-wings ... though while I'd love the visual look of it, I have to agree with Simon that they would be an absolute pain to have outside some situations. I'm curious if they are 'functional' for the people that have them. Doesn't look like this setting has Artificial Gravity, which implies they probably don't have anti-gravity either, and possibly not reactionless drive tech (the fact that the sports rocket wasn't using it doesn't mean they don't have it) and that means that a lot of your 'flying person' tech based options are limited (using tech to fly, and the wings for stabilisation).
There is of course the 'actual flapping the wings' method for flight, but assuming a mostly normal human body attached to them, you'll need some very interesting muscle tissue to get the power-to-weight required, and there is no way it will look anything but clumsy in use, at least in anything close to 1G. Gliding of course is always an option, and comes mainly down to just how big the wings are in relation to the person.
What can I say, I've done minimal bits of study onto this subject. :) Generally for your classic 'angel' effect, at least for how they often look and move in fantasy or anime, the wings are really just a special effect, and they tend to fly like they are using levitation or similar.
-- Brett
Re: I Want An AIS
Re: I Want An AIS
Note that birds don't fly upright, and large birds spend a lot of time gliding. Humans also don't have a keel to attach things to.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of people with wings, however for your cinematic effect, with them flying around without a lot of flapping, and being able to hover in place with the wings slowly moving (instead of going at hummingbird speeds, and sounding like a helicopter), you're looking at magic, psi, or super-science. :) The setting for this story hasn't, as yet, shown any of those.
-- Brett, who yes, does spend more brain-time then he should on things like this. :)
Re: I Want An AIS
You can be pretty sure that the winged people are doing it purely for the image. There might be ways to use them to fly in very low gravity, but as you say, we're not built for it.
Re: I Want An AIS
Gliding may be doable ... though they will probably need the kind of bone re-enforcement that Marc has, and something special with the wing support muscles. They'll also be gliding in a horizontal posture as well.
In 1-G though, they would need to have the wing-span of a Hang-glider to manage proper gliding, so it's probably going to be more 'breaking falls' and the 'wing-suits' you see used by some people today to not so much glide as give a lot more horizontal distance to a vertical fall then you might otherwise get. And even they tend to use chutes at the end.
Hmmm, given that turbines and power systems for them are probably very compact for the tech, they might manage something like proper flight if strap a turbine between them for thrust, and just go for it. It's going to be more a jet-pack with organic stabilisers then 'winged flight' but could be a lot of fun. And would still work in the Arena too.
Hmmm, I wonder how well the wings would work for propulsion in zero-G ... i.e. most of the Arena ... probably poorly, though again, combined with a jet, could make them very agile. However a pure tech approach will do a better job.
-- Brett, who's still putting too much thought into this. :)
Re: I Want An AIS
Some of the augmentations that they're capable of might even be able to overcome some of the other usability issues; if you're much stronger than normal human and you have reinforcement throughout your physical structure, you can pull off things that normal humans can't.
The center-of-gravity and balance issues would seem the hardest to deal with directly.
Re: I Want An AIS
Enough augamentations make them a lot more pratical, even at the normal size for your clasic angel look (wingspan about twice the person's height) they should slow-fall fairly well, even in 1 G, and of course it would give them extra options in low or zero-g enviroments with air (Arena in general for example).
One thing to not forget is that for wings to work, they need to have a lot of power, and they don't just have to flap ... soembody with that mod and it properly rigged up to have the king of strenght it would need has a couple of very nasty close-combat striking weapons there.
Even a large bird can break bones with it's wings if it's trying ... at human size, if they could manage the balance, they could break people, and have a supprising reach with them. Also augamented jumps would be useful for some combat situations. No much good for a 'modern' (read: guns) fight, but for some Arena situations, could be just the thing.
-- Brett
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